GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND. 



besieged in the Legations at Pekin. The opening 

 of the first Parliament of the Commonwealth of 

 Australia by the Duke of Cornwall was men- 

 tioned, and his intended visit to New Zealand and 

 Canada. The raising of fresh contingents for 

 South Africa by Canada and the Australasian 

 colonies, the success of the Ashanti expedition, 

 and the alleviation of the suffering and mortality 

 caused by drought in India through a seasonable 

 rainfall were noted as subjects for rejoicing. Care 

 had been taken to limit expenditure, yet the naval 

 and military requirements of the country and the 

 South African war necessitated an inevitable in- 

 crease in the estimates. The demise of the Crown 

 rendered necessary a renewed provision for the 

 civil list, the King placing unreservedly at the 

 disposal of Parliament the hereditary revenues of 

 the Crown that had been so placed by his pred- 

 ecessor. In referring to the death of the late 

 Queen at the opening of the speech, the new mon- 

 arch pledged himself to walk in her footsteps. 

 The Government having been strengthened by its 

 renewed mandate from the people and possessing 

 an overwhelming majority, while the Opposition 

 was divided on the war policy and disorganized, 

 ministers were careless, and their party lacked 

 discipline to such an extent that the ministerial 

 majority frequently sank to a perilously low 

 point, and on an important amendment to the 

 factory bill the ministry was actually defeated. 

 The Radicals and the Irish Nationalists, whose 

 alliance had been avowedly dissolved, were en- 

 couraged by this circumstance to join forces again 

 and to attack the Government on its conduct of 

 the war and its failure to make peace. Acrimoni- 

 ous debates on these subjects took up most of 

 the time of Parliament, though when the house 

 divided on these questions a large section of the 

 regular Opposition voted with the Government. 

 Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman insisted that the 

 Government was wrong in demanding uncondi- 

 tional surrender, that the Boer leaders would ac- 

 cept terms proper to be offered to freemen. The 

 burning of farms as a military measure was de- 

 nounced by Liberals in general. Mr. Dillon's mo- 

 tion condemning the conduct of the war as dis- 

 graceful and dishonoring to a nation professing 

 to be Christian was not approved by Liberals, and 

 mustered only 91 votes against 243. Mr. Cham- 

 berlain and Mr. Balfour took a firm stand against 

 granting the least shred of independence to the 

 Boers, though whenever they laid down their arms 

 they should be leniently treated. Besides farm- 

 burning, the destruction of all stock and stores ac- 

 cessible to the Boers, the employment of armed 

 natives, the executions for treason, the suspension 

 of constitutional rights in Cape Colony, the 

 threats of retaliation against the enemy still in 

 the field, and above all the concentration of Boer 

 non-combatants in camps of detention, were vigor- 

 ously denounced, yet Mr. Lloyd-George's motion 

 protesting against the concentration camps ob- 

 tained only 134 votes against 253. Mr. Redmond 

 hoped that the Boers would be strengthened in 

 their resistance until they separated South Africa 

 from the empire that deluged it in blood. The 

 conciliation of those in the field was the means to 

 bring the war to an end that Sir Henry Campbell- 

 Bannerman, the nominal leader of the Opposition, 

 proposed, and Mr. Chamberlain was held respon- 

 sible for the failure of negotiations with Botha. 

 The futile proclamation announcing that Boers 

 who did not surrender before Sept. 15 would have 

 their property confiscated and be banished was 

 shown by Sir William Vernon Harcourt to be con- 

 trary to public law, yet Mr. Asquith approved the 

 contention of Mr. Chamberlain that the Boer 



fighters were to be treated as bandits. The divi- 

 sion in the Liberal ranks resulted in the formation 

 of the separate faction of Liberal Imperialists, 

 led by Mr. Asquith, who was Sir Henry Camp- 

 bell-Bannerman's deputy in the leadership of the 

 main party, and who was supported in his revolt 

 by Sir Edward Grey and Sir Henry Fowler. The 

 differences of the two sections could not be com- 

 posed, and the return from his retirement of Lord 

 Rosebery to the leadership of the whole party 

 seemed the likely outcome when the Boer resist- 

 ance should be finally broken and the period of 

 reconstruction in South Africa at hand. A grant 

 of 100,000 to Lord Roberts was opposed by few 

 except the Irish compatriots of the distinguished 

 soldier. The King's civil list was fixed at 470,- 

 000 a year, with an annual allowance of 70,000 

 to the Queen if she should survive her husband, 

 and payments calculated according to previous 

 precedents to the Duke of Cornwall and York and 

 the King's daughters, no account being taken of 

 the revenues received by the King from the Duchy 

 of Lancaster arid by the heir apparent from the 

 Duchy of Cornwall. Mr. Labouchere, Mr. Keir 

 Hardie, and the Irish Nationalist leaders mus- 

 tered (30 votes against this provision for the royal 

 family. 



The financial proposals of the Government, 

 army reform, and the condition of the navy were, 

 next to the war, the subjects most discussed. The 

 ordinary expenditure on the army and navy had 

 doubled in ten years, and the expenses in South 

 Africa made it quadruple. The army cost more 

 than any other except the mammoth army of Rus- 

 sia; yet it had been found deficient as a fighting 

 machine, and Mr. Brodrick's reform proposals 

 were regarded as illusory, and the addition of 

 117,000 men to the former strength of 563,000 as 

 fictitious. Slight and ineffective as the reform 

 seemed to be, the cost of the army amounted to 

 about as much as the naval budget, and the tradi- 

 tional naval policy of the Government suffered a 

 relapse in the stress of the military perplexity. 

 Mr. Winston Churchill took up the note of warn- 

 ing that his father, Lord Randolph Churchill, had 

 emphasized by the sacrifice of his public career. 

 Experienced statesmen had similar fears, and Mr. 

 Balfour promised that, whatever was done for the 

 army, the navy should not be neglected. In the 

 voting on the finance bill the Cabinet carried the 

 proposal for a loan of 60,000,000 by a majority 

 of 69, the duty of 4s. 2d. t a hundredweight on 

 sugar by one of 60, the coal duty by 44 majority. 

 Trifling concessions were made by Sir Michael 

 Hicks-Beach in regard to both the coal and the 

 sugar duty. The Nationalists moved to exempt 

 Ireland from the main provisions of the bill. Mr. 

 Morley and Sir William Harcourt admitted that, 

 since the war was so popular, it was right that 

 the masses should bear their share of its cost. 

 The majority on the third reading of the bill was 

 170. 



The question of establishing a final Court of Ap- 

 peal for the empire was referred to a colonial con- 

 ference, the majority of whose members were op- 

 posed to any drastic changes in the composition 

 of the existing court, the Judicial Committee of 

 the House of Lords, though they made sugges- 

 tions for strengthening and improving that tri- 

 bunal, which form the basis of further consulta- 

 tions with the governments of the colonies. 



The question of educational reform was one 

 which the Government could no longer evade, its 

 own carelessness having led to legal complications 

 that must be straightened out. Schemes for im- 

 proving both primary and secondary education 

 have been put forward in every succeeding session 



